Sorrow and Hope
by LiquidVamp
Summary: [Steve/Bucky/Natasha] Pt 2 in the Sorrow Series. Sorrow is a an old friend but maybe hope can find a way. An AU StuckyNat fan fiction. *** Endgame Spoilers ***


Sorrow and Hope

Part two in the Unnamed Miniseries

By: LiquidVamp

_**No copyright infringement intended. All characters within this story are the intellectual property of Marvel and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. No money has been or will be made off this story or others like it.**_ My utmost respect to Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the other writers and illustrators at Marvel comic who gave us worlds filled with empowered individuals that faced larger than life challenges and still struggled with the real-life challenges we all struggle with. You have inspired us.

Author's Note: I've watched Avengers Endgame twice during opening week. At first, I was mad, I mean like straight up pissed. I have now watched it again during the rerelease weekend (and saw Spiderman: Far from Home). Now I'm little heartbroken and in need of some personal TLC so here you have it, my own little AU Endgame fic to make myself feel a little better about some of my favorite heroes. Maybe it will make you feel better too.

**This story has several warnings. The first and most important is Avengers Endgame Spoilers**! You have been warned. Please don't read this then get pissed off because you haven't seen the film. It is slightly alternate universe, which amuses me just a little given Endgame's storyline. Third, there is an implied triad relationship that can (almost) be overlooked in this story but was written with such in mind. If you read the first installment of the Sorrow miniseries, Dust and Sorrow, it was less implied.

Happy reading,

LiquidVamp

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Bucky stepped out of the front door onto the porch of the cabin and immediately saw Steve, standing at the edge of the lake, his back to the cabin and the people huddled inside it grieving. His sleeves had been rolled up to his elbows and based on how the collar on his shirt stood he imagined Steve had long since removed his black tie and unbuttoned at least the top button of the crisp white shirt he had worn to funeral. He knew his coat had been abandoned over the back of a chair earlier before he had slipped outside.

He had known Steve a long time, this type of grief, so dense and thick in the air that the misery almost became tangible was something Steve had never been particularly good at handling. It had been worse when Steve was younger. He had spent more of his own mother's wake trying to escape those who had come to pay their respects than he did personally grieving. Later, he had sat, quiet, near broken, on the wide ledge of the window in their tiny Brooklyn apartment for hours just watching the world move on without his mother in it. This, this quiet contemplative Steve, was grieving in a way that was strikingly familiar to Bucky even after all these years. It struck him strangely that this would be one of the things that came clearly to mind even among the disorderly, broken and scattered memories he had recovered during his years after going on the run from Hydra and during his recovery in Wakanda.

Bucky took the steps off the porch and ventured across the grass lawn that was lightly strewn with bits of pine straw and pine cones and where toys dotted shaded spots. He kept his pace slow, knowing rushing to him wouldn't ease any part of the man's pain; pain he finally had time to process now that they had won. Though the word "won" felt a bit like ash in his own mouth given what it had taken to accomplish it. He wasn't prepared to examine his own guilt and grief just yet. He knew he would have to eventually. That was a hard lesson already learned after all but today wasn't that day. Today Steve needed him to put his emotional baggage aside and be there for him like he had when they were young…before wars, before Hydra, before super serums...

He made no attempt to keep his steps quiet, preferring to let Steve hear him approaching. The leaves and pine straw crunched lightly underfoot as he moved closer to the lake and to Steve.

"I promised her I would make it right," Steve said quietly as he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his dress slacks, eyes still trained on the stillness of the lake before them as Bucky came to a stop just behind his left shoulder. He heard his Steve take a deep sighing breath, "I failed…" Steve let the sentence drop as Bucky's right hand came to rest on his shoulder a gentle weight that spoke of friendship that had survived hell.

"You kept that promise Steve," he assured his best friend even while knowing his words would do nothing to easy his best friend's pain.

Steve turned his head and gave Bucky a scathing glance over his shoulder that seemed so oddly out of place on his face that it almost startled Bucky. "No, we traded lives...again."

'Natasha's for yours' and 'Tony's for the world' were both left unsaid though Bucky heard it as clear as day. He tried not to let Steve's grief, guilt and anger stir his own. He had more than of enough of that vile mix for both of them and it would drown him and everyone else if he allowed it. More importantly he knew that while Steve hurt, he wasn't truly angry at Bucky, or any of the other snapped, for being there when Tony and Nat weren't. He was just mad at the situation, mad that it didn't work out the way he had hoped it would.

Bucky dropped his hand from Steve's shoulder, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he stepped up shoulder to shoulder with Steve. "You didn't know, Steve. No one knew. You need to cut yourself some slack."

Steve sighed again. "Maybe we didn't know exactly. Or maybe we did, and I choose to ignore it." The heat of anger drained from his voice now leaving only guilt in its wake. "Nebula warned us that Thanos went to Vormir with his daughter and returned with the stone but not her; that she died on Vormir. That should have been warning enough," he said as he gently kicked a pinecone into the edge of the lake. "We all just assumed that he fought her, and she lost." He shook his head. He knew based on what Clint had said about Vormir that it wasn't a fight between Thanos and his daughter, it was a sacrifice. He had killed her to get the stone. "Now she's gone and there is no undoing it. There won't be any more resurrections Buck, she's gone."

Bucky took a deep breath trying to find his own peace about the situation as he stood beside Steve. "Steve, you know there is always a price to pay but I highly doubt you knew what that price would be before you started this mission. More importantly, even if she had known she would have done it anyway."

"I feel like a fraud, Buck. For five years I talked about moving on, but I couldn't move on then. The moment a feasible way to fixing it came along, I jumped at it without even thinking what we might pay for it. Now, shit, I don't know anymore."

Bucky laughed, half amused and half sorrowful. "You've been playing that same tune for more than hundred years. That damned "fight me" attitude you were born with. You never could turn a blind eye." He paused still watching the still lake in front of them, "I could go on for hours but that seems a bit redundant."

"Jerk," Steve offered with a hollow laugh.

"Punk," Bucky returned heavy with sad affection.

They stood in companionable silence watching the stillness of nature around them. The wreath Pepper had placed in the lake floated serenely on the sparkling water that reflected the afternoon sun. The scene around them seemed altogether too peaceful for the grief that cloaked this moment in time. Perhaps that was for the best.

"The stones have to go back," Steve offered quietly, breaking the silence. "I could…"

Bucky turned, watching Steve's face. "You could what?"

"I don't know. I could try to return the stone in exchange for her."

Bucky shook his head sadly. "Bruce already said he tried to use the stones to bring her back. If the stones wouldn't bring her back when they were together in the gauntlet, I don't think there is a way to do it with just the one. Much as I wish it was that simple. Fuck, I wish it was that simple."

"Still they must go back, and Thor's hammer needs to as well," Steve said resolutely. "It's either him or me and I don't think he's up to going Asgard any time soon. Rocket wasn't too pleased with his performance on the first trip."

Bucky shook his head. "So, it's you then." Steve nodded.

Relative silence hung between them, thick with unspoken emotions that neither of them were good at expressing. Sure the sounds around them continued, birds chirping in the trees as if they had never disappeared, leaves fluttered in the wind, even a slight hum of distant conversation could be heard from the house as people wandered in and out of the cabin that had become Tony and Pepper's retreat. Bucky broke the silence. "You coming back?" Bucky asked more casually than he felt.

It was now Steve's turn to turn and look at Bucky. "What's that supposed to mean? Of course, I'm coming back." To Bucky it sounded more curious than defensive but he wasn't going to call Steve out on it.

Bucky sighed, watching the almost comic disbelief and curiosity on Steve's face. "You could stay Steve. Make your peace with this shit and go live a normal life without the weight of the world on your shoulders…or go back before" he left the before what unsaid, "and make a life with her. Come find me before they thaw me out again. I don't know Steve, anything. Hell, you could go further back, go be with Peggy. I know you still love her." We always knew was also left unsaid. Not that he or Natasha had ever been jealous of a woman Steve had loved literally a lifetime before. Why be jealous of a dead woman?

Bucky could tell Steve was now thinking it over, mulling over the likelihood of such a thing. "I do still love Peggy, even now, but not like that. It's not been like that in a lot of years Buck." He paused shook his head and started again, "I don't think I could do that to her or myself. I don't think I could walk into her life when she assumes me dead at the bottom of the Atlantic then try to explain how I came to be there or worse than there is another me still frozen. She could never understand the things that have happened," he should his head "and I don't think I could live that life now. Too much has happened, has changed. Not when we know what it can be. Not after what started to build."

Bucky nodded in understanding. Change was something they both were intimately familiar with "But you could go back to Nat, build something new with her." It killed him to suggest it but all he really wanted was for Steve to find that happiness that he had begun to find before Thanos.

"With you both," Steve corrected.

Bucky gave a sad little smirk and a little dry laugh, "yeah okay punk. If you can get us both in the same room without killing each other or you. You'll be dealing with my homicidal lunatic tendencies and her trust issues. Good luck with that buddy."

"We did before, we could do it again," Steve said. "It would take time, but it would be worth it." Steve gave Bucky a calculating look. One Bucky had learned a lifetime ago meant Steve had moved from theoretical pondering to 'how exactly to make them work in my favor'. "Or you could come back with me?"

Bucky laughed almost harshly this time. "And have two Winter Soldiers in the same timeline? That sounds like an extraordinarily bad idea even by your standards Steve Rogers."

"There will be two of me as well jerk." Steve smiled, a little actual laughter in his eyes this time. "Speaking of the other me, I'm pretty sure that the version I took the scepter from really thinks I am Loki." A small, true small graced his face it just for a second. "And, I may have let it slip to him that you are alive….but if I'm returning the stone to the exact moment we took it them I guess he won't remember me or that conversation."

"No, but we will." Steve gave him the barest hint of 'the look'. The 'I knew you would see it my way' triumphant grin that always meant trouble for Steve and by extension, Bucky. Bucky shook his head in mock defeat. What had he agreed to exactly?

"Either way, we have time to think on it and plan," Steve said. "Bruce will have to rebuild the platform before we can even attempt to go back. I think we have enough of the Pym particles for both of us to make the trip. But if we don't, Hank Pym is also back, so the ability to make more may be an option."

Bucky sighed, resigned to this wild ass plan of Steve's. Maybe he had triggered the plan so maybe it was his wild ass plan. "Alright Steve, we'll try," Bucky replied as he turned to face the house and the grief that it held. Much as that grief was nearly deafening, he knew they should go back. Be supportive and whatever else people were supposed to do after someone special died. "Come on Steve, I think they need you in there and you can't do anything about the future right now."

Steve nodded, though Bucky didn't see it, and turned back toward the house as well. "Yeah, you're right. Queens could probably use the support," he said as they started back toward the porch.


End file.
